As an award-winning psychology instructor at Stanford University, as well as a health educator for the School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program, Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s job is to help people manage stress and make positive changes in their lives. After years of watching people try to control their bodies, emotions, and choices, she realized that much of what they believed about willpower was sabotaging their success and creating unnecessary stress.
Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called "The Science of Willpower" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name.
Her book, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It , combines the newest insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain what exactly willpower is, how it works, and why it matters.
